Members of India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, say incidents of mob violence in the country are denting the image of India.
Sachin Pilot, president of the Rajasthan state Congress and Milind Deora, a former member of parliament, met the Indian diaspora in Melbourne on Friday during a visit to Australia.
Mr Pilot said the Congress party is ready for the 2019 election.
'The kind of social indicators that were expected to look up, hasn’t really happened. Now many opposition parties are realizing that we must come together' Sachin Pilot“
There’s a huge agrarian crisis in India. The kind of social indicators that were expected to look up, hasn’t really happened. Now many opposition parties are realizing that we must come together. And don’t forget, in 2014, even though the BJP won a full majority, they only polled 30% of the total votes,” Mr Pilot told SBS Punjabi.
He said the remaining nearly 70 per cent vote that polled against the BJP, the Congress is trying to unite all the opposition parties to “harvest that huge landscape”.
After a historic drubbing in the 2014 general election when the Congress party could win just 44 seats in a 545 house, has tried to adopt a fresh approach under its new president, Rahul Gandhi. Mr Deora said their party's focus will be more on issue-based politics rather than "personality politics".
"In 2014, a personality issue took centre stage. But we are trying to give a counter-narrative- what is our plan to give jobs to people, what is our plan to protect women," he said.
On being criticised over incidents of mob violence in the name of saving cows, India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said in India’s parliament that the 1984 anti-Sikh violence was the biggest incident of mob lynching.
Kareeman Bano holds a photo of her son-in-law Rakbar Khan, killed by a mob on suspicion of cattle smuggling, in Kolgaon village, India. Source: AAP
Mr Pilot said the anti-Sikh violence can’t be used to justify incidents of violence happening in the present.
“It is a very sad incident in the history of our country. It is something that we regret so much. Nobody in the Congress party, or anybody in India, can stand for the kind of violence that we witnessed."
"But that’s not to say that you can justify future violence incidents just because it happened in the past… Every day, the Indian people and political leaders feel regret about it,” Mr Pilot said.
Sahila Khan, daughter of murdered cattle trader Rakbar Khan. Source: AAP
The visit of Mr Pilot and Mr Deora was organized by the Indian National Overseas Congress to meet the Indian diaspora in Australia in view of the upcoming state elections in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
“We provide a conducive platform to leaders from both Indian and Australian politics to come together to exchange ideas and discuss social and economic opportunities that can be mutually beneficial to both India and Australia,” National coordinator of the INOC Viv Prasad told SBS Punjabi.
